The Gospel Coalition

In a world that’s decidedly anti-God, following God’s unfashionable ways can be wearisome, scary, trying, and intimidating. Some of this is owing to the fact that all of us desperately long for acceptance. We spend the better part of our lives trying to “get in,” to be approved, to be liked. We think life will become more exciting and meaningful—that we’ll be somebody—to the degree that we can get in with the right person or the right group. If we can achieve a certain level of worldly success, we’ll be accepted by those around us; people will conclude that we matter, that we’re important.

My boys love football. They have the skill for it, the heart for it, and the mind for it. But like their dad, at this point they don’t have the body for it. And sometimes that really gets to them. They’re afraid they won’t be big enough to play the game. One of them was really upset about this recently, and so we talked. I went up to his room, where he was crying, and said, “I know this may seem deeper than you want to go right now, but this is what’s really causing you to be upset: You’ve come to believe that you don’t matter—that you’ll never be accepted—if you don’t succeed in sports. And you think that your success in sports depends on your size. This means you’re depending on your physical development to give you significance. You think acceptance depends on your size.”

What I told him is also what I have to daily remind myself of and what I tell you now: your deep longing for acceptance can be satisfied only when you’re accepted by the One who made you for himself. If you embrace what Christ has done on the cross for sinners, you’re in! Your deep hunger for approval will be satisfied because you’ll be forever, unchangeably accepted by the only One who truly matters. You’ll no longer have to depend on your size, your stuff, or your smarts to get you in so that your life will matter. Once you understand that in Christ you’re accepted by God, you’re free and empowered to live unfashionably—because you won’t need the acceptance of the world around you. You won’t care if you’re “in” with them, because you’ll already be “in” with him.

We can also take great comfort in the fact that, because we’re united to Christ, all that is his (humanly speaking) is ours. He has made it possible for us to be the unfashionable people God designed us to be.

In his book Grow in Grace, Sinclair Ferguson reflects on the fact that Jesus is the captain of our salvation and the pioneer of our faith. He has beaten down a path for us to follow. Because Christ loved and lived God’s unfashionable ways, we can love and live God’s unfashionable ways too. Because Christ dug down deep and stood against the pressures of this world, we can dig down deep and stand against the pressures of this world too. He’s our great trailblazer, our divine bushwhacker. Ferguson provides this vivid illustration:

Picture an army captain hacking his way through a jungle during a battle with guerrilla forces. He leads his men from danger to safety by first facing the dangers, impediments, and tests himself. Similarly, Jesus is the Captain of our salvation. He has not only tasted all of our experiences of temptation but he has gone further. He experienced them in their full strength, when they unleashed all their powers against him. Where we would stumble and fall, he has pressed on. He overcame temptation, conquered death and drew its sting. Now he beckons us: “Follow me, the pathway of faith is trustworthy for all of you to use!”

Our unfashionable Leader has promised that, because he has already done it, we can now do it.

Christians throughout history have believed this in their most trying moments, when the temptation to give in and give up was strongest.

Robert Glover was a devout follower of Christ in England. In 1555 he was arrested for denying state-approved doctrine, tried for heresy, and sentenced to burn at the stake. Just days before his execution, Robert experienced a sense of God’s dreadful withdrawal, and he fell into despair, fearing that God had abandoned his soul. One of Robert’s friends, Austin, visited him in prison and encouraged him to stay patient and wait for God, saying that God would come back before the end.

The day before his death, Robert spent most of his time in prayer, but he still felt no presence or comfort from God. The next day, however, as his executioners led him to the stake, he suddenly felt God’s presence so profoundly that he started clapping his hands in joy and crying out, “Oh, Austin, he has come! He has come!”

When the pressure to give in and go along seems unbearable, we can bank on our Savior, who has promised never to leave us nor forsake us.

To us he has given—and will continue to give—grace and truth. And it’s grace enough, and truth enough, that we’ll become people who make a profound difference in this world . . . by being profoundly different from this world.

Trevin Wax is giving away his favorite 2008 books. For a chance to win, check out his blog post where he explains how.

On Cnn.com today, guest columnist Chuck Colson writes:

If anyone knows how Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich feels right now, I do.

As you’ll remember, “Colson was imprisoned for obstruction of justice in the attempt to smear Daniel Ellsberg, who disclosed the secret history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers.”

Read Colson’s whole commentary here, which includes his testimony and a word of hope for the fallen Govenor.

Last year, I wrote a similar list (you can read it here). As was the case last year, this year’s list is made up of books that I read in 2008, not simply books that were published in 2008 (although some of them were).  I highly recommend all of these books. Not because I agree with everything in them but because all of these books in various ways will challenge you, encourage you, stretch you, and shape you. So, as this year comes to a close, I’d like to hear from you regarding your favorite books read in 2008. In no particular order, here are mine:

1. Christless Christianity by Michael Horton
2. Don’t Stop Believing by Michael Wittmer
3. The Prodigal God by Tim Keller
4. Heaven is not my Home by Paul Marshall
5. Culture Making by Andy Crouch
6. Too Christian, Too Pagan by Dick Staub
7. Culture Matters by T.M. Moore
8. The Faith by Chuck Colson
9. Too Good to be True by Michael Horton
10. The Reason for God by Tim Keller

Alright, those are mine. What about yours?

Update: Justin Taylor points out two more lists–one from Tim Challies and the other from Trevin Wax.   

(Below is a small excerpt from my forthcoming book Unfashionable. I preached on this yesterday)

One of my goals as a senior pastor is for our pastoral staff to embody gospel-centered community so we serve as a model to the rest of our church. How do we seek to do this? We laugh with one another, cry with one another, love one another, serve one another, exhort one another, and forbear with one another. We pray together, read the Bible together, and serve together. We share in one another’s pleasures and pains. And we try, by God’s grace, to “stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). We work hard at becoming the kind of community we want our church to become.

Not surprisingly, our commitment to demonstrate God-centered community has spread throughout our church, and our church has increasingly become what we long for our surrounding area to become. As this continues to happen, our church models what human life and community can look like when fueled by the gospel.

That’s the way God does things—he critiques by creating. He shows us what’s wrong by giving us a model of what’s right. Think about the incarnation of Jesus: God the Son becoming man, taking on human flesh, and showing us perfect humanity. God “critiqued” what was wrong with sinful humanity by showing us, in Christ, what humanity was originally intended to be and what redeemed humanity will one day be again.

The church joins with Christ in showing the world what’s wrong with it. Christ, the Head of the church, did it by demonstrating what humanity is intended to be; the church, as Christ’s body, does it by demonstrating what human community is intended to be. We work at becoming together what God wants the rest of the world to become. The purpose of God’s people is to show a watching world what will one day fill the whole earth.

If Christians care to make a difference in this world, it has less to do with gaining political power or electing the right officials and far more to do with actually living out our new life together in this new community—the church—before the watching world. Our best approach for reaching people in today’s world is not by going door to door and giving evangelistic presentations, passing out evangelistic tracts, or blanketing our cities with evangelistic crusades. Our best approach is living with the people we’re trying to reach and showing them what human life and community look like when the gospel is believed and embraced.

God’s great evangelistic tool is the church—this new, counter-cultural community in which the fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit comes to expression in the unity, community, and joy of God’s people. As we live our lives together in a way that’s consistent with who we’ve been remade to be, we become a blessing to the world by showing them how sweet life can be in a community of individuals who love one another, care for one another, defer to one another, are patient with one another, and serve one another. The world will take notice of a community of men and women who refreshingly and joyfully bear one another’s burdens and who actively look to lay down their lives for others in need because Jesus laid down his life for them. When the world sees that Christians want to help people because God has helped them, they’ll begin to ask what makes us so different. A faithful presentation of the gospel to our world, in other words, requires Christian community on full display.

The church must always remember that she is God’s mission to the world, making a difference by being different.

Mike Wittmer, Associate Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, was interviewed by Justin Taylor about his new book Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus Is Not Enough.

Justin asks super-important questions and Mike gives super-smart answers. A great interview. You can read it here.

In a recent (and excellent) two part interview, Darryl Dash asked Pastor Tim Keller this question:

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the challenges that the North American Church is facing. What keeps you encouraged?

Tim’s answer was deeply heartening to me:

Prayer. Meeting God in prayer. Sorry to sound so trite. Prayer and meditation brings joy. God is on His throne—everything’s going to be fine in the end. The new heavens and new earth are coming in which “everything sad is going to come untrue.” Don’t get too bent out of shape because your church didn’t grow this year.